The first serious study on the paintings of the female icon and one of the most celebrated British artists, Tracey Emin

Dame Tracey Emin DBE is known for her frank, confessional style and for transforming her inner world into intimate works of art. She has become one of the most celebrated artists in the world, a household name, and part of the Art establishment.

Her practice includes painting, drawing, film, photography, sewn appliqué, sculpture, and neon, but in recent years she has focused on painting. Inspired by artists Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch, her paintings are provocative, confrontational, and vulnerable. They are at once deeply personal and universal, and it’s for this reason her work is revered around the world, and she has become an international icon.

The book features more than 300 images of Emin’s gestural and expressive figurative paintings, from the 1990s to today, as well as a conversation with close friend David Dawson and an essay by Australian writer Jennifer Higgie.

Made in close collaboration with the artist, this special book is the first publication dedicated to Emin’s emotive paintings and showcases her soulful work like never before.

‘A beautiful tome…Emin’s paintings are at once challenging, confrontational, and raw.’ – Galerie

‘Emin’s perspective is captured in all its glory in Paintings.’ – Vanity Fair

‘The first in-depth exploration of the punk painter’s oeuvre.’ – V Magazine

‘An immersive and powerful tribute to one of the most important artists of our time.’ –  InsideHook

David Dawson is a London-based painter and Director of the Lucian Freud Archive. He studied at the Royal College of Art from 1987 to 1989, where he was a contemporary of Tracey Emin.

Jennifer Higgie is an Australian, London-based writer and the former editor of frieze magazine. Her latest book is The Other Side: A Story of Women, Art and the Spirit World.

Dame Tracey Emin DBE RA was born in London in 1963, and studied at Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. She represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and was elected a Royal Academician in the same year. In 2011, Emin became the Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and in 2024 King Charles III appointed her Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the visual arts.